


Plainsong

by OtherCat



Series: OtherCat's Snippets and Incomplete Fic [12]
Category: Chrno Crusade
Genre: Drama, Family, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-09-11
Updated: 2008-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the battle is over, all you can do is move forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hymn of Breaking Strain

* * *

_ **Oh, veiled and secret Power  
Whose paths we seek in vain** _

* * *

Shader is never quite sure of how she manages to get both herself and two extremely entangled, barely living bodies onto the scout. She has a vague memory of someone telling her to hurry, that she didn't have a lot of time. She remembers putting both bodies in an emergency life support bag, and rolling it onto a float-pallet. She remembers deactivating the booby trap inside the scout, and she remembers flying the scout. She has no idea of how she managed to do all these things in the time between collision and explosion.

She tries very hard not to think about it.

She wakes up looking at the vast curve of the Earth through the scout's view screen. The sun is coming up over edge, turning the ring of debris into green-gold fire. Shader realizes that Pandaemonium is dead, but the world of perfect freedom is still out of reach. She wipes away her tears, and turns to the life support bag lying on the floor just in front of the hatch.

She drags the bag into the infirmary, and loads it onto an examination table. Aion is impaled on Chrono's lance, and Aion's spine-tail is wrapped around Chrono's neck and arm. There are other wounds, gaping raw, or blackened with fire. Seperating them takes methods better suited to butchery than surgery, but soon she frees Chrono from his entangled embrace, and move him to a second table.

In the end, she has to cut away most of his body. The tiny infirmary in the scout doesn't have the supplies she needs, and even if it did, there is no cure for geas-warped Legion. She curses Chrono during the hours long operation. She damns him to every hell in Dante's Inferno, then invents a few hells of her own as she cuts away at damaged flesh and bone.

She almost loses him twice, but she's brought the mostly-dead to almost-life, and this, she tells herself, is nothing. After the operation, when he's finally stabilized, and wrapped in a life-support coccoon she staggers to the scout's head and throws up the last meal Fiore cooked. When her stomach stops heaving, and the tears have dried up, she staggers back to the infirmary to work on Aion.

* * *

_ **Be with us in our hour  
Of overthrow and pain;** _

* * *

The call comes, and the hell of it is that his voice is just the way Joshua remembers it, and all he can do clutch the phone's handset. Shock, anger, joy, all at once, squeezing him painfully tight, like iron bands. His chest hurts, and for a moment, he can't see or hear, his mind gone utterly blank. "Joshua," the familiar voice says, impatient and concerned. "I hope you're in a private place?"

Joshua nods, even though he knows it is absurd to do so. "Yes. My office." Well, the cubby hole adjacent to the office of the head of this branch of the Order. He doesn't ask questions he knows won't be--can't be answered here.

"Good. Do me a favor and keep my brother from throwing himself on your sister's pyre."

For a moment, he doesn't understand. He can't understand. The words make no sense. When the words finally make sense, seconds later, he curses the voice and the brother both and takes off for the church as if--no, precisely because a devil is at his heels.

* * *

_ **That we—by which sure token  
We know Thy ways are true—** _

* * *

Chrono is aware of people and voices, but he doesn't move. He ignores the tentative questions and demands for his attention, and growls at the hands that reach for her, for him. He doesn't move when a familiar voice calls his name, he just holds on, clinging to Rosette. "Chrono, let them take her," the voice says, and rests a hand on his shoulder.

There is a wave of surprised recognition in the room. "But he's dead!" Chrono is inclined to agree. He's dead, his body just hasn't caught on yet.

The owner of the voice give orders that Chrono doesn't pay attention to. Rosette is taken from him, but now he doesn't protest. "Joshua," he whispers, apology and plea all at once.

"Not here," Joshua says, and pulls Chrono to his feet. Joshua's voice is choked and strained sounding. "Come on."

Joshua guides Chrono through the crowd of people. Joshua speaks to them, but Chrono doesn't pay attention, he feels as if he were walking through a thick fog. Nothing seems real anymore, the sunlight, the grounds of the church, Joshua's hand in his. There's a skip, as if he had time shifted without knowing it, and he's sitting in the back seat of a car. They're going down a country road, bumping over potholes. "He said she was dead," Chrono says finally. He knew she wasn't.

"I thought you both were," Joshua says. "I hoped you weren't."

Joshua pulls into the driveway of a small house, and tugs Chrono out of the car, and up to the front door of the house. He pounds on the door, shouting for Remington. When Remington appears, it's a shock. Remington's face and neck are veined with Legion, and his blue eyes have flecks of gold in them. Remington seems just as suprised to see Chrono as the reverse. "Chrono, my god. What happened to you? Come inside." The minister moves aside as Joshua nudges him into the interior of the house.

They both guide him to a small parlor, and make him sit down on a couch. He looks from one to the other. "What happened to you?" He asks Ewan.

Ewan smiled. "I'm letting nature...take its course."

"You're dying," Chrono whispers.

"I know," Ewan says, and gently reaches out to clasp Chrono's shoulder. "Are you going to be all right? Can I get you anything?"

Chrono shakes his head, and closes his eyes. "I don't know," he says.

They leave him, and he can hear them talking in the next room. "Aion called me," Joshua says.

"Aion's alive too?" Remington asks, shocked and sounding a little angry.

"Yes. Reading between the lines, it looks like Aion was taking care of Chrono, and deliberately kept from him the fact that Rosette was still alive."

* * *

_ **In spite of being broken,  
Because of being broken,** _

* * *

"Minister Christopher, please reconsider! You're a valuable member of the Order, and we don't want to lose you."

"With all due respect, you lost me before you ever had me."

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Twelve years ago, this Council ordered the execution of my sister's partner, Chrono."

"Yet you joined the Order."

"At the time, it was the best way I could make amends. Rosette and Chrono gave four years of their lives to this Order, I could do no less. Eight years for my sister, the man I consider to be my brother-in-law, and four more for myself, to atone for my own actions."

* * *

_ ** May rise and build anew.  
Stand up and build anew! ** _


	2. Fiore

She wakes up on the wrong side of six decades, on the cusp of the next millennium. Or, maybe it would be better to say, she comes back to life in a world both like and unlike the pulps Joshua had loved to read. She comes back to life angry and distraught, not knowing where she is, or how much time has past. She strikes out at the first person she sees, a young appearing man she belatedly recognizes as one of her master's enemies.

At the moment she doesn't care--she'd attack Aion himself if he were there.

The young man dodges her first attack, then catches her, shouting for Shader. "Fiore, the battle's over, you're all right," he says, but what he says means nothing to her. She struggles against his hold, swearing in both German and English.

Shader appears, and her appearance is enough to make Fiore stop and stare in amazement. The demon is wearing a scandalously short dark pink skirt, thick soled black leather sandals, and a tight short sleeved black shirt. The words **I'm Blogging This**, are written across it in white. "Mistress Shader? Why are you dressed like...that?"

The demon looks confused, then giggles. "Future shock!" She says with a cheerful little bounce. "Stop trying to beat up Chrono, Fi, and I'll explain everything, okay?" Shader catches Fiore by the hands, and draws her away from the other demon. Fiore follows glancing back uncertainly at the other demon, who smiles at her, but doesn't accompany them into the next room.

Shader ushers her to a couch in a large parlor. The couch is in front of a sort of cabinet filled with rectangular objects that don't look like books. There's a large box with a glass front, and smaller boxes above it, and below it. Shader fusses with the contents of the cabinet, until she finds whatever it is she's looking for. She slips the rectangular object into one of the box devices, then scrambles to her feet and plops down beside Fiore, as the glass fronted box comes to life with a moving picture. An old man with a familiar face is smiling warmly at her. "Hello, Fiore. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Joshua," Fiore breathes. She watches and listens to the movie, crying and smiling at the same time. When the movie is over, Shader fills in all the gaps the movie didn't include. Who lived, who died, so many small details about how the world had changed, and how it had remained the same.

There's a great deal she doesn't understand, so much so that her head begins to ache. Chrono re-appears with tea and sandwiches, setting them down on a low table in front of the couch. He gives Shader a look of mild reproof. "Shader, there's such a thing as too much, too soon. A lot can happen in six decades," he says to Fiore with an almost apologetic smile.

"This...this is too much," Fiore says softly. She reaches for a cup, and her hand trembles. "Sixty years." She takes a breath. "What of," her voice breaks. "What about Satella?" She can say the name, but she can't say _my sister_. Not yet, and maybe, not ever.

"We left her at the Institute," Shader says. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

Chrono reaches out, and flicks Shader's ear. Shader yelps and rubs her ear, glaring at Chrono. "Don't be a brat, Shader," he says calmly. "We decided it would be better if Satella _didn't_ wake up under the same roof as Aion."

"Where is Lord Aion?" Fiore asks.

"He went out on my bike earlier this morning," Shader says. "He'll probably be back before sunset."

Aion returns before noon, and Fiore, dressed in a long, dark skirt and a white silk blouse with sensible shoes feels out of place and disconnected. Aion's hair is still long, still kept back in a loose tail. His clothes are only slightly different, and he still wears glasses, an affectation he shares with Shader. The only difference is that his face is seamed with a scar that just misses his left eye, and trails down his cheek. "Fiore._Fi_," he says, and smiles. "We missed you."

"My Lord," she says, and curtsies. She wants to confess that she failed in her duty to guard Joshua, that she went instead to see Satella again. But she knows that he knows, and there's nothing she can say.

"Aion," he corrects her with a slight smile. "Or if you want to be formal, Mister Fitzroy. Have you been outside to see the Ring yet?"

Fiore shakes her head. She had spent most of the day sleeping, or listening to Shader's stories, and Chrono's clarifications and corrections of same. "No."

Aion takes her hand. "Let's change that, then." He leads her out to the back yard with its green lawn and carefully tended flower and vegetable gardens. He points out the shimmering arc to her. "That's all that's left of Pandaemonium. Not quite what I had in mind, but at this stage, I'll take what I can get."

"I'm sorry, my Lord," she says. She's never wondered about the world he dreamed of, the world of perfect freedom. It was never anything she wanted, because a doll could not want because it did not need.

"Do you want to be Fiore, or Florette?" Shader asks a few days later, over breakfast.

"I-I'm not sure I understand," Fiore says. She pokes at the food on her plate. Fiore might have been suprised that Shader had finally learned to cook if she hadn't known that the waffles and sausages had been pre-cooked, frozen, and then re-heated in a device called a 'toaster oven.' _I'm not sure I know who Florette is_.

Shader ate a sausage in three chews, and speared another one on her fork. Fiore restrains herself from scolding the demon. "It's easy," Shader says, gesturing with the fork. "Fiore is a servant and a caretaker, Aion's last line of defense, and one of the keys to our goal._Florette_ is someone we haven't really met yet."

"Florette was murdered," Fiore says, and is suprised by the vehemence in her tone. _I am only a doll. _Somehow, those words seem laughable now. She doesn't feel like a doll right now, not at all. She feels--angry. Truly, and terribly angry. "How can she possibly further your goals?"

Shader flinches, her ears flattening to the sides of her head. "However she wants to, or not at all," Shader says, and looks down at her plate. "Personally, I want to get to know Florette, if she'll let me."

"When Florette knows who she is, she'll tell you," Fiore says, and allows herself a slight smile at the look on Shader's face.

"Let's get started then!" Shader says, and gives her an exuberant hug.


	3. Aion

Aion awakens, and knows that the world is no different than it had been. His perfect world is stillborn, uncreated. There is little solace in the knowledge that at least Pandaemonium is dead. It isn't in his nature to accept half measures.

He recognizes the master bedroom of one of their safe houses, and stares in disgust at the inoffensive furnishings. He tosses aside the blankets and stumbles out of the bedroom on legs that feel as if they've been replaced with rubber. Shader collides with him as he emerges, arms wrapping him in a fierce, desperate hug. She's crying and laughing, babbling a mile a second without a pause for breath. Details go whizzing by at faster than light speeds. How she'd rescued them, how scared she had been, with tangents concerning the Apostles and Mary.

Aion gets an arm free, and tweaks her nose, one of the few guaranteed ways to create a break in the endless flow of words. She gives an indignant squeak, but stops talking. "Slow down, Shader, I just woke up." He smiles at her, because it's impossible not to. At the same time, he feels a slight twinge of something very like concern. In her story, the one thing Shader hadn't mentioned was Chrono. "Did--what about Chrono?" _My poor bird who won't fly. _

"It's--it's pretty bad, Aion," she says, and tugs him to one of the other bedrooms. "It's a good thing I had p-practice with Fi."

"What do you--" Aion starts to ask, then falls silent when Shader opens the door. "Oh Chrono," Aion says, staring a moment, before gently closing the door. He doesn't know how it's possible for someone to be that badly damaged and still be alive. Shader is watching him nervously. Waiting for his verdict, he realizes. "He has to live," he tells her. "If only so I can kill him again for doing this to himself."

* * *

The worst part, more than the deaths of Genai, Viede, and Rizelle, is glancing at a magazine rack, and thinking that he should get the newest _National Geographic _for Joshua. Or starting to go into the kitchen to ask Fi when dinner will be ready--and then remembering that she is gone. Death is a cutting off, a limb that has been severed and thrown into an incinerator. Absence is a limb that might potentially be reattached.

_Fifty years, _Aion thinks. Remembers the ghost-limb feeling of Chrono not being there at his side. How long had it taken him to invent new patterns, patterns that didn't include Chrono? He had made Fi and Joshua into touchstones, each of them partially filling the places within himself where Chrono had been. Now they were gone, and Chrono is back. Shader is alive, but Genai, Viede and Rizelle are dead. He is in balance, but no longer whole.

"It wouldn't be hard to find him," Shader offers tentatively. "Joshua, I mean."

"No," Aion says. He wants to say yes, and damn the consequences. "Joshua has no need of us, and we have no need of him. It's better this way." If he says it often enough, maybe it will even be true.

* * *

During the first few weeks, Aion almost changes his mind about the decision he made concerning Chrono. For all of Shader's tender care and fierce determination that Chrono live, Aion isn't certain that even her skills will be able to heal him. He says as much to her, and is surprised by her vehement response.

_"No. _You aren't going to tell me to give up on Chrono. You are _not_going to tell me that there's nothing that can be done for him, because you told me to _make Fiore usable." _The last is said with a catlike shriek of rage. Shader's ears are pinned back, and her tail is lashing angrily.

Aion doesn't understand, doesn't see how one could be connected to the other. The situation is entirely different--the difference between the arrogance of clinging to the dead, and the necessity of destroying Pandaemonium and the system of lies. "We needed her," he says, wanting to calm her down. He isn't sure how, though. Shader is so seldom this angry that Aion has never developed a procedure for dealing with it.

"She was _dead_Aion," Shader growled. "And when I was done with her, she wasn't alive, either. And she _knew it." _Shader takes a deep breath, and wipes at her eyes. "It's your choice Aion, it's still your choice. But if you want his death, you kill him."

"I don't want his death," Aion says. "I don't want him to exist in the twilight, and I don't want him to be a puppet, either."

"He won't be, Aion," Shader says. "I have more to work with, even if it doesn't look like it."

* * *

One day Aion comes into Chrono's room, and sees that his eye is focused on the shadows of tree branches cast on the wall. That eye turns to Aion, but there's nothing in it--it sees, but it doesn't know. "Chrono," Aion says softly, but there's not a flicker of comprehension from his brother. There are many things he could say right now, but none of them would be understood. "I'm glad you're awake," he says instead, and quietly leaves the room.

They are not on speaking terms at first; there is no way they could be. The argument between them has no possible resolution. Aion says; I want to recreate the world. Chrono says; I won't let you destroy it.

Shader is the bridge between them, and Aion is amused by this. There is a human myth about a squirrel who carries messages--consisting of threats and insults--between a great eagle living in the upper branches of the World Tree, and the terrible dragon imprisoned beneath its roots. Shader is a peacemaker, not a agitator like the mischievous squirrel in the myth, but the pattern is remarkably similar.

Chrono comes back to himself slowly. There are gaps and disconnects in his memory that render him either viciously hostile, or muddled and confused. To Aion, Chrono seems like a series of portraits taken at various ages. The Chrono who is seven years old is distinct from the Chrono who is twenty or eighty. The Chrono who remembers the escape from Pandaemonium is different from a Chrono who remembers Mary's death, or what happened at Seventh Bell.

An uneasy truce forms between them, and the key is Joshua. Each of them has memories of him that the other does not. There is a medium of exchange, and through that, new patterns form. New patterns between Aion and Chrono, and Chrono and Shader, and Shader and Aion--though there is an empty space where Aion's goal once existed.

The world is no different than it had been, and Aion does not like half measures.


	4. Promises

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Where I should have been all along. I'm going to go to Rosette."

"How? You can barely walk!"

"Then I'll crawl. You had no right to keep this from me, Aion. You had no right to keep me from her."

"I and Shader didn't nurse you back to health so you could throw your life away. Weren't you under a death sentence?"

"I made a promise, and I'm going to keep that promise, no matter what."

* * *

"I have come to collect my brother," Aion says. The human glares at him. His anger is very close to the surface, as are the webs of Legion running beneath his skin like varicose veins. The human doesn't have much longer to live. Less than a decade, Aion thinks. He wonders why the human is choosing such a slow death.

"I don't know that I should let you take him," the human says.

"I really doubt that you could stop me, Mr. Remington." He hears movement from inside the house, and the priest is joined at the door by Joshua. Even though logically he knows that Joshua would have grown in the years between, it's still a shock. The boy is a boy no longer, but a handsome young man, his eyes clear, alert, and determined.

"We wouldn't be able to stop you," Joshua says. "But Chrono would never forgive you."

"He already doesn't forgive me," Aion says flippantly. "What is one more unforgivable sin between us?" Joshua's eyes harden, and Remington almost growls. It's only for Joshua that he says in a softer, placating tone, "please, let me see him."

Joshua and the priest exchange a look, and quietly stand aside, allowing him to enter.

It's as bad as he thought it would be. Chrono is curled up on the couch in the tiny living room, eyes open but not really seeing anything. Aion kneels beside the couch and takes one of Chrono's hands in both of his. Chrono's hand is cold, and there is no sign that Chrono is even aware of his presence. This is worse somehow than during the first few nightmare days when he had feared that Chrono would never wake up, that his mind had been destroyed. "How long has he been like this?" Aion asks.

"Since we got here, more or less," Joshua says. "He talked at first, responded to questions, but it's gotten a lot worse. Is there anything you can do for him?"

"Aside from keeping him from throwing himself on Miss Christopher's coffin and begging to be let inside, not a great deal." Aion hopes for a flicker from Chrono, but there's nothing. There's a snarl from the priest however, and a quiet, placating comment from Joshua.

"Do you remember the state of the exterior of Mary's tomb, Joshua?" Aion asks without turning. "How the outer chambers were half full of water, and the seal was so badly damaged you couldn't read the writing? You'd think the Order would have kept a better watch over it, since they are so afraid of him."

"I remember," Joshua says. And because Joshua has always been such a _perceptive _boy, he says, "you couldn't break the seal."

"I won't let him bury himself again," Aion says quietly. "I won't let _them _bury him."

* * *

Joshua stares at the device, and tries to wrap his mind around the thing Aion is asking him to do. The purpose of the device is to gather tissue samples. He knows how to use it, and he's had it used on him. Why Aion wants him to use it on his sister is almost as unbelievable as the request itself.

"It's not as if I'm asking for her hair and fingernails so I can cast a curse on her or something," Aion says irritably.

"I'd hope not," Joshua says, looking up at Aion. "You were never that petty. At least, I never thought you were." The words _until now _are left unspoken.

"You think I was being petty?" Aion asks. "What sort of welcome would he have had? He was under a sentence of death, was he not?"

"You kept them from each other," Joshua says lowly. "You had no right to do that. As to the other, we would have figured something out." The Council owed Chrono, owed Rosette too much to demand Chrono's death a second time. If necessary, Joshua would remind them of his own crimes, and Ewan's confession, prior to his retirement as a member of the Order. He would remind them of Rosette's statements prior to being dismissed from the Order. _"We did what we had to do. We did what we set out to do four years ago, and we succeeded. We atoned for the sins of our family, in the only way that we could. There is nothing you can say or do that will take that away from us."_

"I did not lie to him," Aion says. "I have never lied to him, or anyone. I may have omitted the truth, but I did not lie."

"Do you think that matters to him?" Joshua asks.

"No, I know it doesn't," Aion says. He picks up the device, and holds it out to Joshua. "I won't apologize, I think you know why I can't."

Joshua nods, not trusting himself to speak. It's not that Aion won't apologize out of pride, and it's not from a belief that Aion has done nothing wrong. It's only that Aion does not allow himself to regret. Any apology Aion might make would be a lie, and that was one thing that Aion never did.

"This is for Chrono. Something he would never think to ask for," Aion says.

"It won't bring her back."

"You should know by now that doing so would never be my intention. This is for Chrono," Aion repeats. He smiles, his expression both wry and fond. "This is for family, which you are a part of." A pause. "A family which you were both a part of, despite everything."

* * *

"What will you do now, Ms. Harvenheit?" The young man asks once they return to the Hendric Foundation building.

"I'm not sure," Satella confesses. "See how the world has changed, I suppose." Despite a stock market crash, and a second world war, Satella is still a very well-off woman thanks to the Foundation. Stock in the company had been purchased in her name, and there is also a trust fund.

"Will you consider our offer?" He smiles hopefully. "No pressure, of course."

"No pressure," Satella says, amused. The position offered is a training position for the Foundation's investigative unit. She's protested that all of her knowledge and experience is sixty years out of date, but the young man doesn't seem in the least bit fazed by this. "I will think about it, Mr. Christopher. But I make no promises."

**Author's Note:**

> The poem quotes are from "The Hymn of Breaking Strain," by Rudyard Kipling. Don't blame me for this, blame "The Undertaker's Horse" an album of Kipling poems sung by Leslie Fish.


End file.
